So Not to Forget
by PlanetOfTheWeepingWillow
Summary: Alfred lives at an institution that helps him get along day to day. However, an accident can change his life. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, he can only barely comprehend it.


Now I don't write good, but I try. I try very hard and missus Jamie tells me that. I like that about her. She always tries to make me feel very good and that makes me happy. My spelling she says is very good. I think that is good, too. But she also says that it has to be improved. I cannot do that well so she reads over what I wrote and makes it neat. I said that would mean changing my meaning but she said no she just will change letters. It's like making colors darker on a painting. I don't like paintings much so I do not know what exactly she means. I try, though.

I have to write this in order to explain what happened to me. Jamie says it is very important to do this because then I can understand it better. I think I know what she means. She also says to start at the very beginning so I will do that.

The morning it happened I ate breakfast: eggs and toast. The eggs were salty. I told the nurse this and she gave me a mean look. That means she did not want to talk about it anymore. I felt sad but understood. But the toast was good. (Jamie says this part is tedious. I do not know what that word means).

She also says to give something called background. It is like an explanation of what happened before and where I am. I think I understand. I live in a small apartment in a big town called Rustlebrook and I go to an institution that helps adults with mental disabilities. That means I go to a big, white building with many nice nurses and doctors who help me learn and help me stay calm. Sometimes I get very nervous and I start to yell and become mean. The doctors say I can get better if I relax and do what they tell me. Also they sometimes give me small white pills. Those help usually. But I do not like swallowing them because they remind me of that scene in _Pinocchio _where the ship goes down the whale's throat and that only makes me more nervous.

On the day of the "incident", Jamie calls it that, I was in that institution getting my pills when the new man walks in. The new man scared me at first because of how he looked. He had very big eyebrows and very messy blond hair. I was afraid of him at first, too, because he had some muscle. I have muscle too. I am very large but that does not mean that I am brave. I think I am weaker because of my size, like I try to say I am sorry for being so big. Jamie agrees with this. But the new man was somewhat smaller than I was. He was also very loud and had an accent that made it hard for me to understand.

He came up to my table after greeting everyone else. I looked up at him, away from his shadow that was across the lime-green of the table. He had big, nice green eyes and a smile that I thought was very dangerous.

"Hello there!" He said loudly and stuck out a hand. A nurse started coming to him to stop him. I do not remember well what happened because I was so scared. When I get too scared sometimes I start seeing in only white and I forget what happens. This is called panic I think.

"Hello," I mumbled after a while. Then I had become less scared.

"I'm Arthur, what's your name, boy?" He asked.

"Alfred." I replied.

I was still very scared at this point but I tried to relax and breathe like the doctor told me. Arthur must have realized this because he started to laugh and that only scared me more. It scared me until he started to smile and I saw he was not a bad man at all. He was a little strange. But he was still human. He reached over and patted me on the back.

"Glad to meet you, Alfred." He said.

I remember very well what people say to me because I can replay everything that happened in my head. It is like using an old video of your memories and rewinding it and watching it on the television. Except there is no one laughing and pointing next to you, you are all alone.

I did not see Arthur again until that evening. He went to get "treated". I had not been treated before because I try to behave. They only treat the people who behave badly. It does not make me feel comfortable to think about it so I won't.

That evening is when my brother Matthew visited. He came with these small blue flowers that have pointed petals like stars, the kind you see in books. He brought me a big bunch that I sniffed and then gave to a nurse because she was afraid I might start sneezing. Matthew then gave me a hug and said I was doing well. I gave him a big smile and asked if that was true. I do not know why I asked that. I knew it was. My brother would not lie. But I see people always ask that when they know the answer so I did too because it made me feel "normal".

Then I saw Arthur sitting on a couch and reading. He read much more quickly than I could. I was amazed. I wanted to ask him how he could do that. Before I could a woman came to visit him. She gave him a hug and was weeping. She had pretty brown hair. Arthur put his hand on her hair and petted her like a cat. I did not understand why you would pet a woman like a cat. I think she would be insulted, but I watched anyway because I had nothing else to do.

Eventually the woman left and Arthur watched her leave. His green eyes followed her and I followed them. I liked the way they glittered, kind of like a gem I saw once on a commercial on TV. I wondered how someone could love another person so much. It almost made me sad but I did not really understand it so instead I was very confused. I sat like that until they gave me dinner and my medication and then said I could go home.

I am allowed to sleep at home but I have to go there from breakfast until dinner so they can watch me and take something called tests. I thought tests were only in school. They said tests are actually everywhere.

Usually I walk home. Sometimes when Matthew comes he drives me home. That evening he did. I rode next to him, sometimes bouncing in his truck. I liked his truck. It was dark brown and shone in the sunlight to look very "menacing". Matthew called it that. I liked the way the word sounded so I kept it in my head in a little vault, even though I don't know exactly what it means. I tried to read the dictionary about it once but I got bored and did something else.

As we bounced along the road, watching the sun set in pretty colors like red and orange, Matthew talked to me about his plans. He said he would try and get me a job so I can live with the rest of the world, since I was already thirty-five. That excited me. I could barely sit still. The houses moved by, growing smaller and then bigger as we reached the city. There were many cars and it made my head hurt to think about how many people there were there. Matthew made me think of something else by asking who that new person was. I explained that it was some man named Arthur who loved a woman so much he petted her like a cat. At this Matthew laughed. I laughed too because his laugh his funny and makes me happy.

Matthew let me live in my own apartment he pays for. Now he wants me to pay for it. I think that is a good idea because then I will have something the nurses call "responsibility". Jamie tells me that it means to be in charge of something and you have to keep it good. She is right always so I listen to her.

Matthew turned into a different lane to go towards my apartment. Before my apartment there is a section of town that crosses many roads so it is usually busy. I wrote fifteen letters to the city to ask them to change it because it makes me nervous that we could get into a crash. They ignored it. Matthew told me to drop it because the only thing we get into there is into traffic. I thought this to be funny so I laughed.

"What are you laughing about?" Matthew asked. His knuckles were white on the wheel as he got into traffic.

"I thought of the time you told me about this place." I said.

"Oh, that's right, yeah, that's funny." He said this in a way that meant he was not paying attention. He kept his eyes on the road, like good drivers are supposed to.

I don't know much about good driving since Matthew does not let me drive. He says that it is dangerous for me in case I get too scared and make a mistake. That made me sad so I went quiet.

"Where will I work?" I asked him.

The woman in the car next to us was smoking. I could smell it and it made my stomach hurt. She looked at me and smiled. Her lips were red like cranberry juice.

I tried to smile but I felt nervous so I looked away and forwards, at the sky. The clouds were like blotches of fluffy sugar against the purple sky.

"I tried to get you hooked up with several places. There's a grocery store that would take you but I don't think you'd like having so many people around you."

I shook my head hard.

"Thought so," he muttered, sighing. We had a long way to go. I could have gotten there faster if I walked. But it was OK because I liked being with my younger brother. He was very smart and patient. He was a teacher at a high school.

"What did you choose?" I asked.

"I chose a surprise. I know you'll like it." He smiled.

I smiled too. I did not like surprises very much but Matthew knew me good enough to tell when a surprise would be a bad surprise or a good one. He must have known this would be a good one because he kept smiling for a while.

After a few minutes we began to turn left to get into my house. Matthew was humming to the radio. I tried to hum along but I got lost and stopped, so I listened to him instead. I noticed something in the mirror and I was pointing it out, but Matthew would not listen. My heart started to beat very hard. There was a blue car coming very fast towards us and I did not like it. Matthew was not paying attention. He said I should relax. He thought I was having an "episode" I do not agree now.

I got so scared I could not speak. I gripped the car and trusted Matthew. He looked at the window, making a bad mistake of trusting the other driver. I do not drive but I know the first rule: everyone is a horrible driver but you. I started to say something but the blue car became so close I could see the person behind the window. It was a teenager with sunglasses and other teenagers in the car. I did not trust it. The teenager was laughing at something and I thought he looked a little bit drunk.

Then I started to panic because everything went white. I heard something go THUMP and someone SCREAM and then my chest started to hurt.

When I started to see again I was on the side of the road in the grass. I heard an ambulance wail in the distance. I could also see into the two cars. It makes me sad to write about this but Jamie says it will feel better if I write about it and explain my feelings so I will write as good as I can.

In the car I saw Matthew leaning out, his hand out against the ground and blood was coming from it. I saw his face and it looked like a mask of the Devil because it was so red and broken. In the other car I could hear someone screaming and I could see the teenagers broken and bloody too. I threw up along the side of the road. My chest hurt and then in the ambulance the man told me I had broken a rib but I was fine otherwise.

In the ambulance I asked if Matthew was OK. The man did not respond and I thought it meant yes but then I learned it meant NO. It mean NO NO NO NO NO NO YOUR BROTHER IS DEAD DO YOU NOT HEAR ME? And everything went white again.

After the surgery (I am sorry I do not remember what happened after the accident because it was all white and very painful) I went to live full-time at the institution because now I had no one to care for me. Now my brother was dead and in his grave. I visit him every day and put little blue flowers he calls "forget me nots" on his grave and I pray for him and I wish he has a good life wherever he is. I hope it is better than this one because this one was far too short and far too scary. Arthur sometimes tries to help me but I see he does not understand.

I know what happened to Arthur now, too. He has a cancer in his brain that makes him forget things. That is why he has to come to the institution so he can have his medicine because his wife has to work more to pay for the medicine and doctors.

Sometimes I see that he forgets who his wife is and is mean and loud to her. I do not like it when this happens. His wife is a very nice person who brings me cookies and always says "I'm sorry" but I do not know why she says that. I think she says it about Matthew or maybe about Arthur or maybe about both.

I wondered again how someone could love someone else so much that they come even when the other person keeps forgetting them. It reminds me not to ever forget about Matthew, even when he was bloody and broken.

Now when I walk I sometimes visit my old apartment just to see how it is now. Now a cat lives there with an old woman. I do not talk with them or come close because they both are old and ugly and scare me. They scare me like the white, rectangular sign where the accident that happened that says:

IN MEMORY OF MATTHEW WILLIAMS

DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE

And there is also a list of the teenager's names. That makes me sad too because they didn't have much of a life either, they were so young.

I do not have anything else to write. Because if I have to write something I should first understand it and I do not really understand what is happening now. I do not understand what the meaning of my life is right now but I think it is to just watch and listen to people and how they love and remember, like in white signs and small blue flowers.

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><p><em>I do not own Hetalia<em>


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